


An Offer of Peace

by lloronadeazulceleste



Series: The Dragon's Blood [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, azula got her redeptiom but that does not grant her forgiveness, life is hard enough and mai just need some rest, or something like that, trying to reconnect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 14:29:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19133935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloronadeazulceleste/pseuds/lloronadeazulceleste
Summary: Fire Lady Mai shares a drink with former Princess Azula.





	An Offer of Peace

**Author's Note:**

> “I could inherit the throne,” Azula says, leaning onto the cushions like a cat.
> 
> The joke falls flat and humorless in their drunken stupor. Mai does not look at her; the only thing betraying her tears being the way she clenches her jaw to muffle her sobs –sobs that never truly leave her mouth. Azula wants to be surprised but feels like she can’t. The Fire Lady’s silent tears serve to sober the princess up.

“I must be broken,” Mai says to her one night, drunk on sake. How else could she stand to be by Azula’s side? It is no secret the justified disgust the Fire Lady feels towards her sister-in-law.

The former princess is not bothered by it. Azula would have hated herself if she were Mai, too. It’s been long enough since she reconciled herself with that knowledge. Too long for an apology to serve as something has passed, so the princess accepts what she is presented, and sulks. Seems that brooding is indeed a quality that runs in the family. She tries to wear it with honor, and feels none the less pathetic for it.

The two sit in the Fire Lady’s chambers, red silky cushions at their comfort. What started as a rather uncomfortable talk over politics (the former princess had surprisingly needed the insight of the Fire Lady) extended to an invitation to dinner that did not involve any kind of poison. Mai would never dare hurt someone who was helping dear Zuko, even if that someone unnerved her.

The Fire Lady’s confession comes suddenly in between their banter (a banter that was born out of what seemed like an endless awkward silence), and the princess is left without words. She gasps and drinks yet another sip of her glass. Perhaps she has had too much to drink. Perhaps she is dreaming.

Before she can think deeper of it, the Fire Lady continues. “I must be broken, and he must get rid of me. How else will he have an heir?”

“I could inherit the throne,” Azula says, leaning onto the cushions like a cat.

The joke falls flat and humorless in their drunken stupor. Mai does not look at her; the only thing betraying her tears being the way she clenches her jaw to muffle her sobs –sobs that never truly leave her mouth. Azula wants to be surprised but feels like she can’t. The Fire Lady’s silent tears serve to sober the princess up. “Don’t be stupid, Mai,” she barks, and feels instantly guilty, so she quickly goes on, “my brother –idiot as he is – loves you.”

Mai has the audacity to roll her eyes at the princess, and Azula is once again reminded of just whom she is dealing with. Of how things have changed between them. She is thankful for that, though she would never care to admit it. “What does love have to offer when the entire country is pushing him to—“

“You are an idiot, just like him, if you fail to notice that you owe nothing to this stupid nation,” Azula spats. Somehow as the words go on they sound gentler than she intended.

Mai seems taken aback by them, if only for a moment, and the former princess sinks in deeper into her cushions; emotions were never her art. She does not need to be giving words of encouragement to the one who betrayed her so long ago. She does not owe anything to old pals, no matter how tired her mind is, or how lax her tongue has become, almost with a life of its own. 

She does not need, she does not owe, yet her mouth cannot be silenced when her past friend’s eyes burn with a sadness she has never seen before. One she can’t fix.

“What can you know?” the Fire Lady hisses in all her tamed elegance and pretty masks, “you must enjoy seeing our losses. Every little baby we have had to bury is a step closer to the throne for you, anyway,” she says, as she pretends to laugh but the sound is broken, and Azula feels as if she is looking at something she is not supposed to be seeing. She recognizes a pain that runs deep –deeper than she could ever imagine – and she trembles with her own pain. A pain that echoes the Fire Lady’s.

They were the blood of the dragon. They were blood of her blood.

“I would never wish on the death of my blood, Mai,” she admits weakly, her eyes set on her sister-in-law.

“You did so with Zuko,” Mai says, not missing a beat. “You’d have killed him a hundred times and laughed each one.”

Azula shakes her head. She’s oh so tired from all of this. Vulnerability does not become her, but she cannot stop herself. Her mouth betrays her, and she sounds like a scared child. She knew herself a monster, but even monsters could love.

She had loved, before, as terrifying as it was, and it had been her downfall. Denying and evading were her true enemies.

“Not innocents. Never innocents,” she does not know why she insists, but she can’t keep herself from doing so. It is a truth that burns on her tongue, one she had always wanted to scream to the faces of those who begged for her blood. 

Mai seems to consider it. Azula knows, from just the look in her eyes, that Mai believes her, but the Fire Lady is as tired as she is; she’s been hurting, and she wants to hurt someone else for a change. Mai needs someone to blame, someone to be mad at that isn’t herself. 

“A mad woman’s word holds no power,” she says, as cold as ice. If Azula didn’t know her better, she’d think her smile as true. “Forgive me if I find it laughable, your new sense of right and wrong.”

“You judge me for my past, and rightfully so. But you knew me then,” Azula whispers, and her voice seems to crack with the illusion of a past that she fears only existed in her mind. A friendship built on lies and fear, and never love. She hopes to be wrong.

“I knew nothing but a monster.”

“You knew me then,” she continues, acting as if the word hadn’t stroked her with full force, twisting her insides. Her voice shakes and her hands tremble, and she is terrified, but she goes on. There must have been something, back then. They couldn’t possibly be with her simply because she was a princess. She refuses to think so. They must have been friends. Some of it must have been real. “You knew me then, and I had my limits. I could never kill an innocent merrily.”

“So you would cry while on your coronation,” Mai laughs, and it is once again that terrifying sound that seems to shake the walls and burn Azula’s insides. Fire Lady Mai holds no fire, but she is just as deadly, “big fucking difference.”

Azula reconsiders her options. She does not know why she is so inclined to justify her actions, but she knows she will never let anyone ever again call her a monster. “A princess must accept adversity. A princess does not wish for useless bloodshed”, she recites as she so often did when they were younger. “It was never innocents. Never innocents!” she says, and her voice is frantic. “And I would never, ever, laugh at the pain your loss has caused Zuko.”

“Not Zuko, perhaps,” Mai whispers, her eyes locked on Azula. The former princess never felt so small, “but you wouldn’t cry over mine.”

Azula trembles and ignores why. She wets her lips with her tongue, her hands twisting. “We used to be friends—“

“Were we?” Mai laughs, and takes another sip. “I don’t remember.”

Her eyes tell another story. A tale of pain and betrayal, of hurting and mind games, of fear and love. Azula wants to say she is sorry, wants to say that she never faked it – that she loved them both so dearly, even as she did not know how to. Words die in her throat, and her tears –old, dusted and broken—burn unshed. It would hurt less if the Fire Lady didn’t want to suddenly hold close to the bond they once shared (–must be the hormones—). If her eyes weren’t accusing her of her hurting – if Mai weren’t justifying her turning against her (old habits seem to die hard) even if Azula herself had accepted that long ago.

It would hurt less if Mai hadn’t asked her to stay. If her eyes weren’t pleading, clouded by pain. The Fire Lady is not seeking a friend; she is seeking the words that will echo those of her detractors. A cruel voice that will give voice to her darkest thoughts, to her doubts and fears. But Azula has grown, and she will show them all. She will not partake in hurting Fire Lady Mai anymore. 

She finds that she is not capable.

“I don’t care what you think of me, or my children. But I’d kill you and everything you claim to love if you ever dare hurt or mock what I adore.”

Azula nods sharply. She takes another sip, and chides herself for allowing her feelings to take over her. A princess knows when to retreat.

“There she is,” she finally says, and forces small smile on her lips. A princess knows how to fake everything went according to her plans – a virtue Azula herself perfected. “A true Fire Lady at lasts. Keep it like that, and maybe I can forget just how much importance you are giving to old crones and advisors who hold no power over you.”

“Fuck you.”

Azula promptly ignores the way the Fire Lady wipes her tears as discreetly as she is graceful.

“Your child will come when the time is right, and Zuko would not dare to push you away,” Azula goes on, not knowing why, not caring to discover. The woman before her was once a good friend. A princess remembers and honors what once was.

Mai is not amused. She has heard enough, said enough, lived enough –lost enough. Mai is tired. She does not answer, but that does not stop the princess. The Fire Lady does not know if she should feel touched or frustrated. She is surprised, though, that the princess even tried. For all her bluntness and crude words, she can’t ignore the logic behind them. She knows Zuko would never cast her aside, even if it were for the best.

But Mai has heard, said, lived and lost enough.

“You know why? Because he is the fucking Fire Lord, and the Fire Nation does as he pleases,” she says, her eyes burning. Mai finds she can’t take her eyes away from the princess. “You’re worried I’ll inherit the throne? Don’t get your knickers on a twist: I’d rather die than sit on that chair.”

Before the Fire Lady could answer,eyes wide in surprise at the truth in her words, the former princess stands with all the dignity she could muster. “Sleep well. And don’t you dare push my brother aside. He is hurting, too.”

Mai follows her sister-in-law with her eyes, blinking away her tears.

Azula’s figure disappears around the corner, moving unsteadily yet as nonchalant as always. 

Once her shadow cannot be seen, the Fire Lady finally relaxes. She drinks yet another sip, feeling the ghost of a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips, an echo of another time. She does not know why, but she believes her sister-in-law, and that alone is laughable. She knows she had been pushing her husband away, and she knows he had been talking to his sister. The sudden bond between siblings had kept her on edge until she overheard them talking at the pond one night – they could almost past as a family with no past such as the one behind them.

Knowing Zuko isn’t disappointed is relieving, even if she had already suspected it. His love for her is blinding – she knows that if he were anything like his father she would already be far away, never to be heard from. But Zuko is not Ozai, and she is not Ursa. They will come out of this, she knows. She just wishes Agni acted faster. Zuko might say he does not need a child, but she wants a little kid with her hair and his smile, and those golden eyes of his.

She wants tranquil, and adventures, and the love of a family. And she has them. Yet—

Perhaps she just needed someone to complain. Someone to tell her that Zuko loved her (that wasn’t him). 

Someone who did not treat her as a frail woman.

Someone she once cared about.

 

Mai breathes, and hurries another sip of her drink.

The sun will bless them again.


End file.
